Childhood in Modern Europe

An invaluable introduction to the history of European childhood in both Western and Eastern Europe c.1700–2000.

Colin Heywood (Author)

9780521866231, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 September 2018

296 pages, 20 b/w illus. 1 map
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.8 cm, 0.59 kg

'Heywood … fills a niche here with an up-to-date survey of childhood across modern Europe. After discussing premodern childhood, Heywood matches changes in childhood in modern Europe to trends of industrialization and the Enlightenment. Industrialization shifted rural children as well as adults to towns, where the children initially worked in factories as they had worked in the fields. Enlightenment thought viewed children as individuals to be respected and nurtured and prompted more-scientific approaches to child development and education - first among newly leisured middle- and upper-class children in the towns but eventually including working-class and rural children, slowly removing them from work and thus extending their childhoods. Rounding out this survey is discussion of the negotiation of childhood's boundaries and the growth of childhood culture, changes in children's material conditions, and fulfilling children's potential. This book is both rich and accessible … Highly recommended.' R. Spickermann, Choice

This invaluable introduction to the history of childhood in both Western and Eastern Europe between c.1700 and 2000 seeks to give a voice to children as well as adults, wherever possible. The work is divided into three parts, covering in turn, childhood in rural village societies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; in the towns during the Industrial Revolution period (c.1750–1870); and in society generally during the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each part has a succinct introduction to a number of key topics, such as conceptions of childhood; infant and child mortality; the material conditions of children; their cultural life; the welfare facilities available to them from charities and the state; and the balance of work and schooling. Combining a chronological with a thematic approach, this book will be of particular interest to students and academics in a number of disciplines, including history, sociology, anthropology, geography, literature and education.

Introduction
Part I. Childhood in the Villages, Eighteenth–Nineteenth Centuries: 1. Conceptions of childhood in rural society
2. Growing up in the villages
3. Work, education and religion for children in the countryside
Part II. Childhood in the Towns, c.1700–c.1870: 4. Enlightenment and Romanticism
5. Middle- and upper-class childhoods in the towns, c.1700–1870
6. The 'lower depths': working-class children in the early industrial town
7. Work versus school during the Industrial Revolution
Part III. Childhood in an Industrial and Urban Society, c.1870–c.2000: 8. The scientific approach to childhood
9. Growing up during the twentieth century (1): in the family and on the margins of society
10. Growing up during the twentieth century (2): light and shade in an affluent society
11. Work and school in an urban-industrial society
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], European history [HBJD]